It's the kids that suffer’: exploring how the UK's benefit cap and two-child limit harm children

Andersen, Kate, Redman, Jamie, Stewart, Kitty ORCID: 0000-0001-7744-8741 and Patrick, Ruth (2025) It's the kids that suffer’: exploring how the UK's benefit cap and two-child limit harm children. Social Policy and Administration, 59 (1). 57 - 72. ISSN 0144-5596

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Abstract

The benefit cap and the two-child limit reduce entitlement for households claiming means-tested benefits and disproportionately affect households with dependent children. This article explores the harms the policies are doing to children through drawing upon data collected from interviews with parents affected by the benefit cap and the two-child limit. To investigate the impacts of these policies we draw on the Investment Model and the Family Stress Model, models principally developed by quantitative scholars seeking to understand how economic disadvantage adversely affects children over the longer-term. While there has been frequent quantitative analysis of these models, there has been very little qualitative engagement with them: this article directly addresses this gap in the literature. We show that the benefit cap and the two-child limit cause multiple and severe overlapping harms to children, principally by exacerbating and deepening financial economic disadvantage. Our research evidence illuminates causal processes underpinning both the Investment Model and the Family Stress Model, but also reveals additional harms that are not foregrounded by either model. We conclude by calling for the removal of both policies as a vital first step in reducing child poverty, and further reflect on the need for greater recognition of the harm child poverty does to experiences of childhood; as well as to their future selves.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14679515
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Authors
Divisions:	Social Policy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Date Deposited:	21 May 2024 18:03
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2024 12:27
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123570

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